turned, and looking at him with all the bitterness I felt for his nation, called him, in French, "an English hog!" Till then our quarrel had been waged in Italian. Hardly were the words out of my mouth when his lordship leaped from the bed, and in the scantiest drapery imaginable, seized me by the collar, inflicting such a shaking as I would willingly have exchanged for a tertian ague from the Pontine marshes. The sudden air-bath probably cooled his choler, for, in a few moments, we found ourselves in a pacific explanation about the luckless pencil. Hitherto I had not mentioned my uncle; but the moment I stated the relationship, Byron became pacified and credited my story. After searching his pockets once more ineffectually for the lost _silver_, he presented me his own _gold_ pencil instead, and requested me to say why I "cursed him _in French_?" "My father was a Frenchman, my lord," said I. "And your mother?" "She is an Italian, sir." "Ah! no wonder, then, you called me an 'English hog.' The hatred runs in the blood; you could not help it." After a moment's hesitation, he continued,--still pacing the apartment in his night linen,--"You don't like the English, do you, my boy?" "No," said I, "I don't." "Why?" returned Byron, quietly. "Because my father died fighting them," replied I. "Then, youngster, you have _a right_ to hate them," said the poet, as he put me gently out of the door, and locked it on the inside. A week after, one of the porters of my uncle's warehouse offered to sell, at an exorbitant price, what he called "Lord Byron's pencil," declaring that his lordship had presented it to him. My uncle was on the eve of bargaining with the man, when he perceived his own initials on the silver. In fact, it was my lost gift. Byron, in his abstraction, had evidently mistaken the porter for myself; so the servant was rewarded with a trifling gratuity, while my _virtuoso_ uncle took the liberty to appropriate the golden relic of Byron to himself, and put me off with the humbler remembrance of his honored name. These, however, are episodes. Let us return once more to the Galatea and her worthy commander.